Banishing Stars
by onelight
Summary: Damon was susceptible to a lot of his things because of his upbringing, he knew that. The whole product of a broken home thing. He just had no idea there was more to that then likely not graduating high school and being unable to break a long cycle of abuse. He was clueless about the supernatural possibility.
1. Chapter 1

His father was raging again and it had woken Damon up quite suddenly. He had always been quite sensitive to his father's raised voice.

He didn't move though from his place on top of his bed, his pale sheets twisted underneath him. He stared at the ceiling and listened, waited on getting a clear picture if he was the cause of the ire. He heard a woman's shrill voice, loud but quivering with fear.

Damon sighed. He wasn't the focus of his father's anger today, it seemed like that title was going to his father's new wife, a woman he met at the bar two towns over and married after only a week. She was much younger than his father and Damon thought she was simply more of a teen runaway, rebelling against her family, rather than someone who was actually interested in her father. She was only a couple of years older than Damon himself.

As he heard her scream out in pain, he told himself to ignore it, it was her fault for marrying a man she had only known for a week. It was her fault for not taking Damon's very blunt advice about getting away while she still could.

Damon slammed his eyes shut in an futile attempt to block out the beating. It was so loud it was a wonder the neighbors couldn't hear it. He didn't expect them to do anything though, they never did when it was his voice doing the screaming.

Unable to take it anymore, Damon rolled over and climbed out of his rumpled bed and onto his messy floor and grabbed his phone off the floor where it had fallen. He glanced at his clock, noting it wasn't even six in the morning yet. He groaned underneath his breath as he slid his shoes onto his feet and headed for his window. He lifted the glass and exited the screen-less window, dropping down onto messy, faded mulch.

He closed his window back and headed around his house and towards the road. He pulled his hood up over his head and shoved his hands into his pockets. His nose began to run because of the coldness in the early morning air hitting his face. He sniffed loudly and pulled his phone out as he made it to a familiar street just five minutes later. He dialed a familiar number he had memorized but hadn't added to his contacts. It would have mattered anyway, it would have been the only number.

She picked up on the fifth ring, voice groggy with sleep and a little snappy. A smile weaved itself across his lips.

"Let me in," he ordered and hung up before she could complain about it.

He finally reached the two-story white house he had spent many nights sneaking off to and moved around back. She was waiting there in a pair of pink pajama bottoms and a white tank top, she hugged herself and stared at him with sleepy and slightly sad green eyes.

He ignored the sadness that he knew was for him and stepped up onto the patio with her. The patio light buzzed above them in that way he hated.

"Are you hurt?" Bonnie Bennett asked, eyes skipping up and down his body. He noticed she had her first-aid kit next to her feet. He rolled his eyes, despite how uncomfortable he was about the fact that she bought a first aid-kit for him about two years ago. It made him feel even worse knowing that sometimes that she even had to use it on him.

Damon hated being vulnerable, which was ironic, because that was all he was. A vulnerable sixteen year old, abandoned by his mother and abused by his father. He was poor and the only friend he had in the whole world was a fifteen year old girl who had started off as just some kid he bullied when they were in elementary school.

"Its cold out here." He said instead of answering her question. He sniffed loudly. Bonnie sighed and unfolded herself, she picked up the first aid kit and turned and headed back into the house, Damon right on her heels. "Your grams out?" He asked as they stepped into the kitchen. He took a seat at the island while Bonnie returned the first-aid kit underneath the kitchen cabinet and started making their coco.

"Out cold, face down on her bed. She's still breathing and smelling like vodka though, which is good. The still breathing part anyway." She shrugged, she glanced at him over her shoulder. "What happened?"

Damon shrugged. "Mommy and daddy are having an argument is all." He scoffed.

Bonnie finished making the coco and slid a cup to him and joined him at the island with her own cup. Silence reigned supreme for a while. "How did the visit with your mother and brother go?" She asked taking a sip of her coco and staring him down with those eyes of hers, as if he wasn't straight with her with his words she would get the truth out of him by just staring him down anyway.

Damon looked down into his cup and shrugged as if he didn't care. He honestly wasn't sure if he cared or not. He saw his mother and brother about once a year when they came Italy. Ten years ago his mother had taken his little brother after years of being abused by her husband and fled, only problem was she left him. She left him with a man that called a six year old a sissy and beat him with a belt for leaving toys on the floor. He never quite got a clear answer out of her why she did it.

His mother's family was rich and from Italy, while his father was just some foster kid from the states she found herself falling in love with and turning back on her family for. But the love faded when the money got tight and his father started taking his anger out on them with his fists. His mother moved back home with Stefan and left him. She left him. He had an idea why she left him, though she had never told him so, it was just something he over heard her saying over the phone in one of her screaming matches with his father. She had said that he was to much like his father, that he had the same anger he did and the same darkness in his eyes. Stefan was sweeter, gentler, more fragile, she had to save him from his father. Damon just didn't matter.

He tried to pretend that didn't hurt, that he should find some type of joy knowing in some round about way his mother was saying he was strong enough to survive his father. He tried to see it that way when he was younger but the resentment only grew and he knew the real reason his mother left him and not Stefan was because she loved Stefan and not him.

That was why when they visited, sending a car to pick him up from his father's house and taking him to some hotel, where then his mother would take him to some amusement park or to the beach, and spends tons of money on him for that one day she was there, that was why it was always filled with so much tension.

He hated seeing Stefan, who seemed well-rounded with plenty of friends, fluent in three languages, wearing nice clothes, and most of all not having to worry about being woken up by his father punching him in the face because of some stupid trash not being taken out.

"She bought me some new shoes." Damon finally answered Bonnie's question. Her eyes flickered down to his well-worn white sneakers. The ones he wore all of the time.

"You must of hated them." She said.

Damon shook his head. "I picked them out myself." He said simply.

Bonnie frowned. "That's it? I mean, I know you hate the visit thing, but usually you love bragging about all of the expensive stuff you get."

"I guess I'm just over it." He shrugged again. Bonnie met his eyes as she read him a like a book, annoying him slightly. She always did that.

"Are you going to school later?" She asked, thankfully letting it go. That was one thing he liked about Bonnie being able to read him so easily, she knew when to let things go.

Damon finished off his coco. "Its Monday, Bonbon, you know I don't do school on Mondays." He got up and placed his mug in the sink.

"You're suppose to," she reminded him with a sigh. "How are you going to go to college together if you don't start going to school?"

"Well, I think you know the answer to that." He said slowly. "Anyway, you have plenty of friends that can go off and play college student with you, Bons. Blondie and the blonde jock for one."

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Caroline and Matt, we've all know each other since third grade, you know their names." He waved his hand dismissively. "Anyway, I want to go with you. I think it would be fun, you and me away from this town, experiencing life." Damon gave her a look of constipation as if the idea was sickening. "Oh come, Damon, you're my best friend. I want to experience this with you."

Looking at her hopeful face, Damon's heart squeezed tightly, so he looked away. "Look, I'll consider it if all you're going to do is whine about it."

Bonnie grinned, hoped off her stool and skipped around the island and throwing her arms around him. He quickly returned the hug, fighting back a smile. "I mean, I could just follow you to college, sleep on the floor of your dorm room."

Bonnie pulled away and gave him a dry look. "Don't be ridiculous, Damon." She stepped out of his arms and he fought to ignore the warmth he hadn't even noticed come to him, slip away.

Damon liked to be honest with himself most of the time, so he knew his feelings for his best friend wasn't completely platonic, but he also knew he couldn't and shouldn't go there. First of all, Bonnie was to good for him. Her life wasn't perfect with a mother who abandoned her like his had, an alcoholic grandmother, and a father with a whole other life and family a state away, but he knew having him as anything other than a best friend would only make her life worse.

He wasn't going anywhere fast and he knew Bonnie was.

(BS)

Bonnie wasn't able to convince him to go to school on that Monday, but he said he would attend the rest of the week.

Instead of going home, he wondered around his small home of Mystic Falls a little before ambling into the Mystic Grill a local hang out spot for everyone. He hated the place, it was always crowded and Bonnie always wanted to go there. But the options were limited in Mystic Falls.

He took a seat at the bar and stared at the bartender until he finally broke.

"I'm not going to give you any alcohol and get fired and be charged with aiding the delinquency of a minor, Damon, go home." Frank Smiles, wasn't smiling as he roughly wiped down the bar.

Damon leaned back into his seat and sighed. "You're no fun, Mr. Smiles. I'm just a young youth wanting to having the experience of tasting alcohol, you know, see what all of the buzz is about."

Frank snorted, "Sure, Damon. Go on home before I call your pa." Damon glared at the man at the mention of his father.

"What's so wrong with allowing a youth to experience the taste of alcohol? Curb the curiosity in the presence of a responsible adult?"

Damon jumped in surprise as he quickly moved his head around to stare at woman that had just spoken on his behalf. His eyebrows shot up. She didn't seem that much older than him. She had curled brown hair and olive skin and when she turned to smile at him, he took in her warm brow. His eyes trailed down her body, which she had leaning against the bar besides him. He took in the tight shirt and leather pants, heeled boots, and her curves.

Damon raised an eyebrow.

"Well, its illegal." Frank said dryly. "So, I'll have to see some identification for you to."

The woman smiled and leaned forward in a way Damon thought at first was her trying to flash the man a little cleavage. She looked eyes with Frank and smiled innocently. "You don't have to see anything. You're going to bring me and this boy here as many glasses of your best bourbon as we want and think nothing of it."

Damon watched as Frank stared at the woman, mouth agape as if he were transfixed. Frank then nodded slowly. "A glass of bourbon for the lady and Damon, coming right up." He droned off before turning away, going to fix the drinks.

Damon stared at him, completely confused.

"I'm Katherine," the woman pulled his attention back to her as she held out her hand, "and you're Damon." She smiled.

Damon hesitated a moment, feeling awkward before he held out his hand and shook hers. "Uh, yeah." He said dumbly. "How did you do that?"

Katherine laughed as if he had just said something funny and not as if he was asking a serious question. "A little persuasion goes a long way, Damon. You just gotta know what it is you're doing." Frank returned with the drinks and set them in front of them. Katherine sipped hers and nodded towards his. "Go ahead."

Damon looked down at the glass of bourbon for a moment before shrugging and taking the glass. He took a testing sip and scrunched up his nose at the new taste. He took another sip not even a second later though.

"You like it?" Katherine asked.

Damon nodded. "I think I do." Usually he sneaked his father's cheap beer and he use to smuggle Bonnie's Gram's vodka before she started to notice. The bourbon was his favorite. "You're new here." He stated it as a fact. He knew everyone in the this town, if not by name then by face.

"Its obvious isn't it?" She questioned in a way which he knew wasn't actually a question. "Yeah, decided to check this town out for a while, see what it has? What can I say, I'm looking for an adventure." She smirked.

"Well, you're about to waste your time, lady. You're diffidently ain't gonna find an adventure here. " He snorted into his glass.

She turned to him fully, she cocked her head and licked her red painted lips. Her long hair feel over her tanned shoulder as she smiled charmingly at Damon, who felt a stirring begin up inside of him. She was hot, he had to admit. "Oh come on, there has to be something to do around here?"

Damon couldn't take his gaze off her. "Not really," he shook his head. He frowned. "You're going to leave now?" He asked, for some reason disappointed about the thought.

As if reading his mind, Katherine smiled. "I think I'll stick around awhile. I already found something I find very interesting."

Damon smirked back, because he knew she meant him.


	2. Chapter 2

She was older, hot, and she could do things with her tongue Damon didn't know was humanly possible. It was safe to say Damon Salvatore was completely smitten with the mysterious Katherine. They had spent a lot of time together the last couple of days after their first meeting. It was mostly him spending a lot of time in her hotel room or her doing her thing at the Grill. He still hadn't figured out what that was all about and his reckless nature wouldn't allow him to care enough to comment. She got him free booze and food, that was what mattered.

Bonnie had finally brow beaten him down into coming to school on that Friday, which unfortunately pulled him away from Katherine's bed and her amazing lips.

"Who are you texting?" Bonnie questioned as she leaned over to peer down at the phone in his lap from her place on the other side of the lab table. He turned his phone away and clicked his tongue at her.

"Don't be so nosey, Bons." He chided. Bonnie raised and eyebrow at him.

"Just curious," she said as she glanced at the teacher at the front of the room and made a show of adding water into the beaker of salt. "I mean, you usually only call and text me."

Damon made a mock wounded expression. "Make me sound more pathetic, Bon."

Bonnie ignored his dramatics. "If you finally got a girl friend or something I assumed you would tell me. I told you first when I started dating Joe. I mean this has to be someone special for you to be texting her so much and you haven't shown up to my house in the middle of the night in days."

Damon rolled his eyes. "Are you trying to guilt me or do you miss me sleeping on your floor at the foot of your bed like some pet?" Bonnie blinked at hearing the well-hidden, but still very much there bitterness in Damon's voice. She wasn't sure what to say. Damon sighed and pushed his phone into his pocket. "No, I don't have a girl friend, Bonnie." He shrugged not meeting her gaze. "She's just someone I met at the Grill."

Bonnie bit her lip, "who is she?" She asked after a moment of hesitation, obviously not sure how to handle his sudden agitated state. "Does she go here?"

He didn't want to tell her that Katherine was an older woman and risk the wrath of her judgment. He also knew she wouldn't approve and hand him a well made list while being around Katherine was a bad idea. He didn't want to hear that.

"No," he answered simply, offering nothing else. He grabbed the stack of papers and began writing what he saw happening in the beakers.

"Can you tell me her name?" Bonnie pushed.

"Katherine," he gave her a little in hopes of curbing her curiosity. "Now stop asking, its not anything serious and we're mostly just friends."

Bonnie stared a hole into the side of his face. "You don't have friends, Damon."

He shot her an annoyed look. "I have you."

"Except for me," she corrected herself.

He shot her a smirk he didn't really feel, not at all liking how the conversation was going. "There's enough of me to go around, don't worry you're pretty little head."

She huffed in annoyance, but at the very least she stopped pushing him on the subject.

(BS)

Damon was acting strange.

That wasn't really honest though, Bonnie knew, he was acting like himself when she saw him, but that was the point, she rarely saw him. His promise to come to school more went out the window and it had been a month since she had actually saw him in the halls of Mystic Falls High. He no longer called her in the middle of the night, he barely called or texted her anymore at all.

At first she was angry, he obviously wasn't being a very good friend. Not when her grandmother had passed out on the living room floor and she had needed someone to help her carry her to her bedroom, only for Damon not to answer his phone. Damon was the only one of her friends that knew about her grandmother's alcoholism, he was the only one she could call. So she was forced to leave the woman out cold on the floor, which caused the old woman to wake up in a bad mood which resulted in Bonnie having to listen to her lectures from how to properly clean the bathroom to how kids these days all dressed liked sluts. Oh, and Bonnie couldn't forget to mention the rants about witches. Oh and the spam sandwiches she was forced to eat for two days straight because of her grandmother's unwillingness to hand over cash or go grocery shopping.

But then her anger turned into worry when she finally caught sight of Damon's Katherine. She was what she expected and also not what she expected all at once. She was pretty like all of the girls Damon seemed to attract until his personality shown through and drove them away, Bonnie had expected pretty. She was dressed in tight jeans, low cut red shirt, and heels Grams would beat her with if Bonnie was ever caught wearing, Bonnie expected the sexy clothes even. But Bonnie did not expect the age difference, though Katherine didn't seem terribly older then them, the fact that she was sitting at the bar and knocking back drinks suggested she was at the very least old enough to drink, that worried Bonnie, mostly because Damon was being handed drinks and he was knocking them back as quickly as Katherine. And what really made Bonnie worry was the feeling she got from Katherine, something about the woman just felt off and very wrong. Caroline said she was just jealous that Katherine had stolen her best friend from her, but Bonnie refused to believe that though she had no bases for her bad feeling when it came to the woman.

Damon had been drunk of his sunk that night and sloppily introduced them, hugging her and the older woman calling them his two favorite girls. Katherine had simply smiled thinly at her while Bonnie couldn't find it in her to offer her own.

That had been over two weeks ago and after not seeing Damon in all of that time is what drove her to the Grill with Matt and Caroline even though she had a big Math test to study for.

"She diffidently came here to see if the reject and his mistress were hear." Caroline said dryly, shooting Matt a knowing look. "I told you there had to be a reason we were able to get miss study pants out on a week night."

Bonnie pulled her gaze from the bar, which was packed, but missing either of the two people she was looking for. She frowned at her blonde friends across from her. "I'm just worried." She defended herself.

"Damon's a big boy, Bonnie." Caroline reminded her. Bonnie wasn't so sure, Damon was a lot softer then they knew. "If he wants to have an affair with that woman let him. I mean, how long could it really last. I'm sure you'll have you're 'best friend' back soon." she air quoted the words 'best friend' and Bonnie decided to ignore that.

"I'm sure he's fine, Bonnie." Matt offered more helpfully. "Damon's just being Damon, having fun without consideration of the consequences."

Bonnie chewed on her bottom lip. "I just don't trust that woman."

"I get where you're coming from, Bons." Caroline agreed. "What type of grown woman wants a seventeen year old kid with no prospects whatsoever? Her intentions are without a doubt not pure." Bonnie frowned. Was that suppose to make her feel better? "But neither are Damon's," she added with a shrug.

"But what if he actually falls for her?" She questioned, to herself mostly.

"What would that have to do with you, Bonnie?" Caroline asked with raised eyebrow and a small smile.

Bonnie knew exactly what her smile was implying and rolled her eyes in dismissively. "He's my friend and I don't want him to get hurt."

"Look, Bonnie, what can you do about it either way? You can't make him stop seeing her or stop him form developing feeling for her. Now, can we please stop talking about Salvatore?" Caroline said.

Bonnie knew Caroline was right and she hated it.

(BS)

It was well into midnight and Bonnie wasn't asleep and instead was bent over her math book with a strained expression on her face as she tried to focus on the numbers in front of her and stop them from blurring together.

She sighed in frustration as her gaze darted up to her ceiling from where she sat on her bed. She groaned. She couldn't afford to fell another test.

Her gaze dropped down to the book next to her math book. It was a book with a leather cover and wrinkly pages, while dust still caked it in certain places. Her grandmother had given it to her earlier that day in the middle of one of her rants and had called it a spell book, she had actually used another word but Bonnie only remembered that it was supposedly a books of spells. She was horrified that her grandmother was so insane that she actually kept a book of 'spells'.

She shuddered. Her grandmother actually believed she was witch. This was her legal guardian, this crazy ass drunk woman.

Bonnie was sure she was set up to fail at that moment.

She reached for the book and picked it up and sat it in her lap. She didn't really want to dive deeper into her grandmother's delusions, but she needed a distraction from math and her ever presence worry for Damon.

She flipped through a couple of pages, slightly surprised to see her grandmother knew Latin but not at all surprised to see all of the nonsensical rattling going on. She sighed and worried if she would inherit the crazy gene.

She was just about to flip to another page when her cell phone vibrated against her thigh. She quickly picked it up, knowing it could only be one person.

"Damon," she greeted with more eagerness then she meant to. She was met with heavy breathing on the other end of the line. She frowned deeply. "Damon?" She questioned in alarm. A second later he said something, voice strained and wobbly. He said what he always did and hung up.

Bonnie slowly pulled her phone away from her ear and stared down at it for a couple of seconds. Her skin tingled and she knew something was wrong, but she slid off her bed, grabbed her sweater off her closet doorknob and exited her bed room.

She moved downstairs of her darkened home, heart beat drowning out all other sounds. She made it to her backdoor quicker then she had actually wanted and slid on a pair of her Gram's garden boots and opened the door. She didn't exit her house and instead peered out into the darkness.

It was almost as if he appeared out of nowhere, one second he wasn't there the next he was. He stayed in the shadows off the porch though, hidden just outside the light's reach, his body trembling.

"Bonnie," he croaked.

"Damon," she responded heart jumping into her throat for some reason.

"I need you," he groaned, "come outside."

"What's wrong?" She felt tears prick at her eyes. "Are you alright?"

"Come out, please," he begged.

She had so many questions she wanted to ask him. What was wrong? Why was he hiding in the dark? Why was she suddenly so uneasy? Instead, she pushed it all back because he said he needed her and he sounded like he really did.

So Bonnie took the two steps needed to be completely out of the safety of her home. She had no reason to feel uneasy around Damon anyway, right?

It happened to quickly for her to truly comprehend what was happened. It was pain in her back first as she was slammed up against the siding of her Gram's house and pain in her neck second when Damon slammed his teeth into her neck.

She cried out in fear, pain, horror, and shock. Her hands flew up to grip Damon's shoulders weakly as she tried to push him away. It hurt so bad she saw black spots dancing around her eyes.

Then the pain stopped or rather it got a little less as Damon let go of her and he crumbled to the ground holding his head.

"Stop," he cried out brokenly and in pain.

Bonnie slid to the ground in shock, her hand flying up to her bleeding neck as her Gram's stumbled out of the backdoor. She stared daggers at Damon. Bonnie was staring at him to, his face was his anymore. It was marred by dark, tainted veins and his eyes were bloody red. With her blood around his mouth he looked like a monster.

"What type of trouble have you gotten into this time, boy?"

Something about her grandmother's words must have snapped something back into him because the veins faded and his blue eyes returned. He still looked in pain, but his gaze feel on Bonnie and his pain expression seemed to intensify.

"Get on, get out of here, vampire. Why would you come here in attack the one person who has always been by your side? Don't come around here anymore or I'm going to give you much more then a headache."

Damon's hands feel away from his head like lead bricks, his eyes still locked on the bleeding trembling Bonnie. "I," he began, eyes watering he turned around going to flee, "I'm sorry."


End file.
